Hello Everyone

New to the forum, stumbled upon this during the last month when I built an 11lb notch-lock crossbow for my son's Medieval period school project.

Putting it together was great and I learned a lot about what to do/not to do...just a start.

Tiller is red oak, the prod is red oak 1.5" wide, tillered, backed by jute string and weldbond, the string is Dacron B-50 6-strands, Flemish loop, and the stirrup was some old clothes hanger stand we found and hammered flat. Quarrel made from some dowels we found at Home Depot. These shown here were too heavy and I eventually made shorter versions in the 250-grain range.

Welcome aboard Ken: Geezer here. Your first effort looks pretty darned good, and if it throws bolts/arrows downrange with any consistency, you can consider the project a success. And now, on to greater things. Beware, this stuff gets addictive pretty fast. I speak from 30 years' experience! Geezer.

Hi Ken: I do like the notch-lock action - very simple. I also like the roller nut release, so will try that next. I had wanted to cold-form 5160 steel but after reading through a few threads, I think I'm better off getting parts off of an online supplier for the 2nd build.

Just a heads up that some of the online steel prod suppliers are "glacial" in their response times. Check some of the other steel prod postings here. I avoid the whole issue by using hand-made fiberglass or composite fiberglass prods.